Nabble - Wikipedia Announce

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 45 Number: 101 Tech flash

2008-11-07T01:22:13Z

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 45 Number: 101

2008-11-04T16:01:48Z

******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org

Year: 2008 Week: 45 Number: 101

******************************************

An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community

//////////////////////////////////////////

=== Technical news ===

[Image: => File:] - Brion announced that he will be fulfilling a
long-time wish: renaming the "Image:" namespace to "File:" due to the
fact that it contains much more than just images. He will be making
this change soon, so please update any scripts that rely on it *when*
it is live. "Image" will remain as an alias.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/39998
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44

[Ubuntu] - The Wikimedia Foundation tech team decided to simplify
things by moving all of their servers to a GNU/Linux distribution:
Ubuntu.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/40064
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9116787

[New Search] - Another long-awaited tech improvement: the search
feature! Thanks to some work by Robert Stojnic, we are currently
migrating to lucene-search 2 which includes new features like much
better searching and interwiki matches. When a search matches a title
from another project in the same language, a box on right appears
which holds the link to the sister project page.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-October/039861.html
http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/152/new-mediawiki-search-features-on-wikipedia (blog post with
pictures)

[RenameUser] - There are now additional options when renaming an
account: automatically recreate and block the old account.
Previously, all this had to be done by the bureaucrats themselves --
this process is now simplified.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15181

[CodeReview] - Brion enabled the CodeReview extension on
MediaWiki.org. This is an extension that greatly helps with the
review of coding and will hopefully allow the sites to be updated with
newer code more quickly.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-October/039569.html
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CodeReview_todo_list
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CodeReview

[Textbook-l] - Wiki-to-print and ODT are now live in all Wikibooks editions.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2008-October/001367.html

[EN wp search] - a new search engine is live for the English language
Wikipedia. One of the new features is the question "Did you mean ...?"
like the one asked by google. Unfortunately, because of hardware
problems, migration of the other projects will have to wait.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/40346

=== Proposals ===

[Essentialpedia] - A more concise Wikipedia, containing only the most
essential topics.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Essentialpedia

=== Policy ===

[GFDL 1.3 released] - A new version of the GNU Free Documentation
License, which is used by most of the WMF projects, has been released.
The new version makes it possible to migrate to the Creative Commons
by-sa-3.0 license.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34061

=== Foundation ===

[Fundraising 2008] - This year, the fundraiser has started discretely.
By the time you read this, or soon after it, the classic site notice
will be live. The donation pages have been redesigned, the Jimbo video
is back, and a new feature is a form to give your answer to the
question "How has Wikipedia made your life easier?". Like in previous
years, the listing of the donations and their comments remains.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Stories/en
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionHistory/en

[Annual Report] - The first annual report of the WMF has been
released. This is like a PR publication that contains financial
information about the WMF. It may be useful to explain what the WMF
actually does.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report

[New Chapters] - Two new chapters were approved in the October and
November 2008 board meeting. Let's all welcome Wikimedia Brasil,
Wikimedia Indonesia, Wikimedia Hungary, and Wikimedia Norway to the
group of chapters!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Local_chapters

[Chapter news list] - A new mailing list has been launched. It is
meant to be an announce-only mailing list, for those who wish to keep
in touch with what the chapters around the world are doing. It will
receive regular updates from various chapters about their activities.
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports

[Meeting Report] - Michael gave an unofficial recap of the recent
October Board of Trustees Meeting. In it, he discussed updates to two
policies, update on board calendar, discussions about open standards,
file formats, and some changes to the Advisory Board. He also said
that the minutes will be posted soon after they are approved.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046554.html

[Sub-national Chapters] Another topic of discussion at the board
meeting was sub-national chapters. The board supports the development
of sub-national chapters where appropriate and is starting a workgroup
to figure out how the sub-national chapters will be handled.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046590.html

[Wikimedia Argentina] - is going to give the "Wikipedia Academy"
conferences and workshops next November 6th.
http://www.wikimedia.org.ar/wiki/Academia_de_Wikipedia

=== Community ===

[General Survey] - A multilingual Wikipedia survey has been launched
by the Wikimedia Foundation and UNU-Merit. Currently, there are
versions available in Dutch, Tamil, and Vietnamese with many other
languages (including English) going live in the next few days to
weeks. Please complete the survey so that the Foundation can more
accurately get a picture of who contributes to the projects! Don't
worry, no personally identifiable information will be released by
UNU-Merit or the Wikimedia Foundation without permission of the
respondents.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046736.html
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/10/24/multilingual-wikipedia-survey-launched/

[Wikipedia Logo Updates] - A project spearheaded by the Foundation and
Wikipedia community members to fix the errors on the globe of
Wikipedia's logo and to fill in the blanks on the "other side" has
begun. This project was started in response to many concerns over the
years that there were many errors in the globe. Community and staff
members both agreed that it would also be nice to have a full globe
for memorabilia and for a 3D prop at events. It is requested that all
community members join in on the discussion at Meta-Wiki!
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/comproj/2008-October/000661.html
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia/logo

[Wikis Take Manhattan] - A scavenger hunt and free content photography
contest aimed at illustrating Wikipedia and the
transportation-oriented Streetswiki (covering sites in Manhattan and
New York City) was held. It was coordinated by New York City
Wikimedians, Free Culture Columbia, Free Culture NYU, and The Open
Planning Project with 23 teams and over 50 participants (the great
majority non-Wikimedians). The grand prize winners will be having a
free dinner with Jimmy Wales.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan
http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/wikis-take-manhattan/

[Wikinews Meets Google News] - After a long series of discussions with
Google, Wikinews is finally listed in the search results of Google
News site: http://news.google.com/. The problem was that Google did
not think it was reliable enough to be included (since anyone could
edit), but after Wikinews had FlaggedRevs enabled it was finally
deemed reliable!
http://news.google.com/news?q=source:%22wikinews%22

=== Awards ===

[DE wp] - The German Wikipedia won the audience award "OnlineStar" in
the category "knowledge, news & information".
http://www.onlinestar.de/gewinner-2008.html?&no_cache=1

=== Other news ===

[Probably off-topic] - nevertheless - A 6-year old, heavily
brain-damaged girl is now able to talk to hear parents with a computer
that tracks her eye movements. She's also able to browse the internet,
and maybe to read Wikipedia one day?
http://tinyurl.com/6nokso

=== Quote ===

"Wiki is 2/3 of planning, the rest is a loop in the dark" (Napoleon
Bonaparte, according to Eric Johnson at Wikimania 2008)

//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 720
Editor(s): Cbrown1023, Walter
Corrector(s): Oliphaunt
Thanks to: Effeietsanders, Pharos, bawolff, Sabata, Gizmo
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////

Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy
news (and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe;
mailto:request@...?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 40 Number: 100

2008-10-02T06:34:25Z

******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org

Year: 2008 Week: 40 Number: 100

******************************************

An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community

//////////////////////////////////////////

=== Technical news ===

[Global blocking] - Stewards are now able to block an IP address or
range from editing on all Wikimedia projects (except Meta). This
option is intended to be used with restraint and for a short time frame.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_blocking

[Robots.txt] - this is file that exists to control what pages are
allowed to be indexed by a search engine. Basically you can use it to
keep stuff out of Google. A recent added magic word __NOINDEX__ gives
the same result on a specific page. Until now only the developers
could edit the robots.txt for all WMF-projects. But now it there a new
MediaWiki-page to control that. There is a central part of the
Robots.txt that is not in local control. But on the page
[[MediaWiki:Robots.txt]] you specify wiki-specific instructions for
the spiders of the search engines.

[Global bot] - it is now possible for bots to get a global bot status.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bot_policy#Global_bots

[New tools] - Several users have created external tools for analyzing
the history of articles. Statistics, a history search function, page
view diagrams.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/09/09/more-story-in-wp-history/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Histlegend -- example of how
to include the tools to the history function

[Flood flag] - only at Meta, but it can be requested for other wikis
also, is the now the flag "flood". It is actually exactly the same as
the "bot flag" only is it named "Flood". The idea is that when a sysop
wishes to do many similar, repetitive and non-controversial changes
then that user can ask for the "flood"-flag on a bureaucrat. The
result is like with a bot that the edits are hidden by default.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Flood_flag

=== Policy ===

[New logo] - Meta, the neutral ground wiki for all Wikimedia
Foundation projects and wikis, has a new logo. This was decided after
a one week running poll. It used before the WMF-logo and the now
changed to a different one but in the same general style.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel/Metawiki_logo_poll

[use of global groups] - the function of global groups is used to give
certain groups certain levels of global rights. For example WMF office
staff and systems administrators have been given certain global rights.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_global_permissions

[Delete Wikiquote] - a proposal to close the Wikiquote project was
closed without consensus. The argument to delete Wikiquote was that
some see it as one giant copyright violation and not compatible with
WMF goals.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metapub/On_disbanding_Wikiquote

=== Foundation ===

[Board] - user Frieda of the Italian Wikipedia has resigned from the
board of the WMF. The board does not know when she will be replaced
for now.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/32774

[Wikimedia Nederland] - On November first will Wikimedia NL hold there
4th conference in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Early registrations are
open.
http://www.wikimediaconferentie.nl/

=== Community ===

[Books] - It was announced this week that three books were published
relating to Wikipedia. Lennart Guldbrandsson from Wikimedia Sverige
wrote a book in Swedish titled "Så fungerar Wikipedia", which
translates to "How Wikipedia works". Wikimedia Sweden also has its
first WikiReader available (about Swedish Birds).

Also, a few English Wikipedians wrote their own book about "How
Wikipedia Works" (same title, different book then the Swedish) and
they were published around the same time. This book was written by
Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates. Wikizine is mentioned
in it on page 345 in chapter 12.
Earlier in 2008 was also published the book the book "Wikipedia: The
Missing Manual". (ISBN 0596515162)
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/32914 for Swedish books
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/95320 for
English book
http://nostarch.com/wikipedia.htm -- How Wikipedia Works (free chapter
download & order info)

[EO Wikipedia] - the Esperanto Wikipedia is proud of there new main
page design. From a text only layout in 2001 has it grown in several
steps to the current modern look that was elected out of 7 proposals.
http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%88efpa%C4%9Do/Nova_aspekto

[source:"Wikinews"] - Wikinews is now partially listed on google news
(due to flagged revs). The are still working on meeting google's
requirement of unique numbers in URLs, so so far only lead articles
have been listed. Before this only mirrors of Wikinews where listed.
http://tinyurl.com/3prv5u -- view all Wikinews story's in Google News

[RU wiki] - On October 18 and 19 Moscow will play host to the second
international Russian-language Wiki-conference related to Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia, as well as other Wikimedia projects.
Registrations are open.
http://tinyurl.com/4y6ll4

=== Media ===

[Sweden] - Recently the former national telephone company of Sweden
(and still the biggest telephone company in Sweden) ran a commercial
for their mobile internet. The commercial ran like this: three men sit
in a outside oak hot tub. One of them tell the others about how a
former king planted oaks in Sweden. The others say: "Well, you know a
lot." Another goes out of the water, is gone for a few moments, comes
back and gives a comprehensive description of oaks, including their
Latin name, while the others are more and more impressed. Then we cut
to a sign that says: "Wikipedia in your mobile phone."
http://media.resume.se/resPlayer.aspx?type=1&id=1250

[Report about wp &win prize] - Wired.com won a $10,000 award for their
reporting about Wikipedia and the Wikipedia-scanner
http://www.journalism.co.uk/14/articles/532334.php

[Jimmy] - A classic item once more; interview of Jimmy Wales on TV,
Canadian this time.
http://tinyurl.com/3h8ppr

=== Stats ===

[No interest?] - after the unblocking of the Chinese language
Wikipedia in China the statistics do not indicate a special increase
of traffic.
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/09/pretty-much-none-whatsoever/

[ES Wikipedia] - reached 400.000 articles on Saturday, September 22.
The Spanish language Wikipedia is the 9th of 256 largest Wikipedias.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

[Special:Statistics] - the statistics page of the wikis now also lists
the number of active users of last 30 days. What a lot more
meaningful is then the number of user accounts created. For EN
Wikipedia is it 153,000 active users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

[If the editors where paid ...] - how much would it have cost? A lot.
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/10/quantifying-volunteer-contribution/

[Bangla Wikisource] - has reached 1,000 pages milestone on 25th
September, 2008.
http://bn.wikisource.org/

[EN wikinews] - The English language Wikinews has recieved its 700
000th edit. First edit was Tim uploading the draft version of our
logo. The 700,000th edit was by 207.108.15.1 commenting about how
connecting strongly religious people
with "extremists" (aka the type who blow things up is a bad thing)
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/WN:WC#700.2C000_edits
http://tinyurl.com/5yf4n9 -- this is how a 700,000th edit looks like

=== Other news ===

[Delitionpedia] - Where do articles go to when the get deleted?" -
The go to Deletionpedia.
http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/09/21/2342226.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionpedia
http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/

[Wikizine] - the good news; Wikizine ID - the Indonesian language
version of Wikizine is back after its formal closure in April 2008.
This thanks to the effort of [[meta:user:Rex]]. The bad news; DE
Wikizine - the German language version of Wikizine is now formally
closed because of lack of support.
http://id.wikizine.org -- reborn
http://de.wikizine.org -- closed

[Wikisage] - Wikisage, a "second generation wiki encyclopedia", is
founded by Guido den Broeder. The active users have most a Dutch
language Wikipedia background. The difference is that users can also
write essays, so a personal POV. And some users can become labeled as
an "expert" and be in charge of certain articles. Basically the expert
voice gets more important than on Wikipedia. The project exists in
Dutch and English but the Dutch version is stronger on this moment.
http://www.wikisage.org/

[Interwiki sync] - A page on Meta is created to discus interwiki
synchronization problems.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_synchronization

[681 hits for wikipedia] - to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Google
the have put online a dump of google from January 2001. Wikipedia was
founded on January 15, 2001. In this google there are 681 hits for
"wikipedia", now it is 251 million.
http://www.google.com/search2001/search?hl=en&q=wikipedia
http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/ -- one of least know WMF-sites ; EN
Wikipedia edition December 2001

=== Was ist das? ===

Well, if you not know it you look it up .. and there is a very handy
FF extension to do so in Wiktionary.

Users of FireFox can install the WikiLook exstension. When installed
you just press shift and point to a word in a text. And you get in a
small overlay screen the dictionary description of it and a link to
look it up in Wikipedia. English language editions only. But due the
multi-language nature of Wiktionary the extension remains useful also
for non-English language users.
http://wikilook.mozdev.org/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7675

=== Quote ===

"If a man speaks in a forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he
still wrong?"

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/If_a_man_speaks_in_a_forest_and_there_is_no_woman_around_to_hear_him_is_he_still_wrong

//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 715
Editor(s): Walter, Hannibal, Cbrown, bawolff
Thanks to: Platonides, Londenp, Bellayet, Arno Lagrange, Lvova
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////

Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy
news (and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe;
mailto:request@...?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 37 Number: 99

2008-09-10T03:33:03Z

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 33 Number: 98

2008-08-12T05:19:21Z

******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org

Year: 2008 Week: 33 Number: 98

******************************************

An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community

//////////////////////////////////////////

=== Technical news ===

[New and useful] - it is now possible to insert the magic word
__NOINDEX__ into a page. The result of this is that when a search
engine spider comes by, it gets the instruction not to index that
page. This way, it should for example be possible to keep certain
pages out of the search results of google. This only works on pages
that are not in the content namespace; for example, on Wikipedia it
will not work in an article like [[Michael Shmerkin]].
Note that anyone who can edit a page can insert this magic word in a
page. There is also a magic word __INDEX__ now. Its use is not clear.
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki?view=rev&revision=37973
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8068

[Double redirect] - a long-standing problem is the creation of double
redirects when a page is moved. The user then needs to click on a
redirect link to continue. There is now a "double redirect fixer". It
works at the MediaWiki level but it behaves like a bot. Sometime after
the move is done, the wiki will check if there is a double redirect.
If so, it will be fixed automatically. By default, the correction will
be done by [[User:Redirect fixer]]. Those edits do not appear in
recent changes.
The name of this "user" can be specified by the setting
[[MediaWiki:double-redirect-fixer]]. If for some reason you wish the
system to not get involved in a double redirect you can insert the
magic word __STATICREDIRECT__ .
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-July/038751.html

[Wikisets] - Not so long ago, a new functionality was activated to
create "global user groups". These groups can be given certain rights
(like "grant and revoke bot flags"); when users are enrolled, they
have the rights of that group on all Wikimedia wikis.
The problem is that those rights are valid either everywhere or
nowhere, and not all communities agree with external users having
special rights on their wiki.
To solve this problem, the "wiki sets" option has been created. This
makes it possible to have "global groups" that are not global. Certain
wikis can opt out, or a global group can be made opt-in.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_handbook#wikisets

[New mail] - Almost (*) all wikis now offer an user the option to
receive an e-mail when their talk page has been changed.
(*) exceptions are enwiki, eswiki, frwiki, plwiki, jawiki, ptwiki,
ruwiki, zhwiki, itwiki and dewiki.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15031

[Download wikipedia] - You are free to download the database dump of
wikis, but for most users this is not very useful. As an alternative,
you can also download a static HTML dump: a huge collection of HTML
files that gives you a local copy of the Wikipedia of your choice.
This makes it very easy to bring Wikipedia to places where there is no
internet or where it is prohibitively expensive.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/03/new-wikipedia-downloads-available

[Ogg support in Firefox] - The fairly popular internet browser Mozilla
Firefox now supports the Ogg Vorbis and Theora media formats in its
experimental version 3.1. It is considered normal that a webbrower is
able to display images by itself; however, for video or audio an
external program or a plugin is required. The Wikimedia Foundation
projects use Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis for their video and audio
recordings. However, besides Wikimedia, these formats are very rarely
used by websites for end users.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/31/1752206

=== Request for help ===

[Illustration Project] - In November 2007 it was announced (wikizine
84) that a donation was received of US $ 20,000 for creating and
improving illustrations. The "Philip Greenspun illustration project
(PGIP)". It has taken some time to organize but now round 1 is open.
Requests for illustrations can now be submitted. People who make a
good illustration that is requested can get paid for it. US$ 40 or 15
US$ will be paid. Organizer is [[commons:User:Pfctdayelise]]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/32238

=== Proposals ===

[Flood flag] - A proposal has been made for a new sysop function
called the "flood flag", that would allow users to hide batches of
repetitive edits from recent changes, like a bot flag does.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Flood_flag

=== Foundation ===

[Job offers] - Wikimedia is offering several technical jobs; at least
a few of the new employees are to work in the San Francisco office,
but remote development and system administration is also possible.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/39257

[WMF budget] - The financial plan for the next fiscal year of the WMF
has been presented. The WMF plans to spend almost 6 million US dollars
and have an income of 7,33 million US dollars. This is a big increase
compared to the budget of 2007/2008. The hiring of several new staff
members, especially for technical functions, has been budgeted. An
extensive "FAQ" on the budget is available.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/01/wikimedia-foundation-2008-2009-annual-plan/

=== Community ===

[EN Wikinews] - has started to use the flagged revisions system on the
wiki. The community is working to integrate this function into the
publishing procedures.

[Move Main Page] - Traditionally, the main page of a Wikimedia project
is in the content namespace. This is because the main page was the
first page created of every wiki. And for most wikis, that was before
namespaces existed. Some wikis have moved their main pages to another
name space. For example, the German Wikipedia uses the "Wikipedia:"
namespace and the Swedish Wikipedia uses the "Portal:" namespace. The
English language Wikipedia is now also discussing a move.
http://tinyurl.com/6dvldz

=== Media ===

[Hebrew Wikipedia] - an Israeli newspaper published extensively about
Wikipedia. Some fragments have been translated in English. It tells
the Wikipedia story from the Hebrew Wikipedia point of view.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1005293.html

=== Stats ===

[布拉沃] - The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles. Due to the
Olympics, the Chinese wikipedia is mostly unblocked in China for now.
http://zh.wikipedia.org

=== Other news ===

[Wikimania 2008] - More videos of Wikimania 2008 have become
available. An overview can be found on a special Wikizine posting and
the Kaltura site. WikipediaWeekly also has some new Wikimania-related
postings.
http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki/index.php/Wikimania_Sessions
http://en.wikizine.org/2008/07/special-post-urls-to-wikimania-2008.html
http://wikipediaweekly.org/

[Wikipedia.org] - The poll discussing which Wikipedias are to be
listed on the central space of the portal Wikipedia.org is now closed.
The result is a very simple criterion: a ranking by most visitors,
without any further specifications or exceptions. These rankings are
to be obtained from Alexa.com.
The portal has been updated according the new system. As a result of
this the Dutch language Wikipedia has been replaced by the Chinese
Wikipedia. According to Alexa, 1% of all traffic to wikipedia.org is
to the Chinese Wikipedia.
Alexa gets those statistics by monitoring the internet usage of people
who have installed the (English language) Alexa toolbar.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Wikipedias/poll

=== Did you know ... ===

... that the definition of a "community member" can differ strongly
between wikis?

... that the Hebrew-language Wikipedia only gives users the right to
vote if they have made at least 100 edits in the last 90 days?

... that the idea for using this system is to make it more difficult
for users with sock puppets to control votes?

=== Quote ===

'It occurred to me that when the dust settled on the Wikipedia versus
Britannica question, the likely conclusion would be 'Wikipedia is more
up to date; Britannica has better illustrations.' —Philip Greenspun

//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 714
Unique Visitors website last week: 76
Editor(s): Walter
Corrector(s): Oliphaunt
Thanks to: Yonatan, adambro, pfctdayelise
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////

Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy
news (and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe;
mailto:request@...?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 30 Number: 97

2008-07-24T14:42:23Z

******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org

Year: 2008 Week: 30 Number: 97

******************************************

An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community

//////////////////////////////////////////

Notice from the editor: this edition does not includes all relevant
news for the time frame between the previous Wikizine and this one. I
decided that getting something out is more important then more delays.
Walter

=== Foundation ===

[New board chair] - The board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation
has a new chair. All board members where in favour to appoint Michael
Snow for the job. Michael, who is a board member since February 2008,
is best known as the founder of the Wikipedia Signpost. The former
chair, Anthere (Florence Devouard), was Chair since October 2006 and
board member since 2004. She is now not longer a WMF board member.
Anthere has joined the WMF Advisory board.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31723
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board

[Board election] - [[meta:user:Wing]] (Ting Chen) is elected as a
community board member to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
His term will expire in July 2009. 3019 valid votes where registered.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Results/en
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board#Ting Chen
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31722

[New hires] - The WMF has hired 5 new staff members; Erik Zachte (Tech
stats guy), Sara Crouse (Head of Partnerships and Foundation
Relations), Rebecca Handler (Major Gifts Officer), Rand Montoya (Head
of Community Giving), and Frank Schulenburg (public outreach
coordinator). Erik Zachte starts in September as a part-time
contractor. Erik is a Wikipedian from the Dutch language Wikipedia but
is mostly know for his volunteer work in creating detailed statistics
for the Wikimedia projects. As a contractor for the WMF Erik will also
work on this.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31508 -- Erik Zachte
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31661 -- Sara Crouse
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31367 --
Rebecca Handler / Rand Montoya
http://stats.wikimedia.org/ -- the stats of the WMF by Erik Zachte
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Current_staff -- overview staff

=== Technical news ===

[SUL] - Bureaucrats can now rename a user to a name that is already
migrated to the Single User Login. This at least when if the global
account and the local account have the same email address or password.

[Video on wiki] - Kaltura, Inc is sponsoring Michael Dale, lead
developer of the MetaVid project, to work in the Wikimedia Foundation
offices in San Francisco beginning in August. Michael will work on
adding support for video editing operations and other video-related
functionality to MediaWiki.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31756

[ERATA] - the item "Restrict upload", section "Proposals", in Wikizine
96 was not correct. Restricting uploads to auto confirmed users only
is not a proposal but is live on all wikis ... except those wikis who
have requested to disable this function explicitly.

=== Request for help ===

[Wikizine] - assistance would be useful (understatement)
http://report.wikizine.org

=== Proposals ===

[Front door] - Just like most people have a very hard time to
understand that a domain of a website can end with something else then
.com have visitors the urge to put "www" before everything. The means
the url "www.wikipedia.org" is an important page and the front door
for many visitors of Wikipedia. 10 Wikipedias have currently the
honour to be listed very prominently around the wikipedia-globe, the
Wikipedias who have the most articles. When a Wikipedia breaks the
100,000 articles milestone the also like to move up and get a spot
around the globe. But space is limited. This a long standing source of
discussion.

A poll is currently opened to find a solution. Users can indicate
there support for different ways to present the Wikipedia-options to
the visitors. The poll is open until July 31, 2008 at 23:59 UTC.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Wikipedias/poll

=== Community ===

[Wikimania 2008] - For this year is it over. WikipediaWeekly provides
audio reporting about Wikimania.
The 2009 Wikimania conference will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
http://wikipediaweekly.org/ -- podcasts 52 / 57
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimania_2008_Alexandria -- some
http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gallery pictures from Wikimania 2008
http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki/index.php/Wikimania_Sessions -- If you
are very lucky you can find some video recordings there
http://tinyurl.com/6l4gwr -- Bibliotheca Alexandrina Webcast
http://linuxawy.org/node/28 -- how to get those streams working
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2008/07/wikimania-alexandria.html
-- Impression by GerardM, who was there
http://tinyurl.com/6fu5hy -- and also one from User:Pfctdayelise

[Most read] - The English Wikinews has a new page that displays the
top 20 of the most read articles of the last hour. This is not done by
MediaWiki but by means of the Domas's wikistats.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Popular_articles

[The Other Side] - Once was it a mystery and cause to speculation how
the dark side of the Moon would look like. Now the question is raised;
how does the other side of the Wikipedia globe looks like?
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31763

=== Other news ===

[Knol] - Google has gone live with their project to create user
written information articles. It is not like Wikipedia in the sense
that an article is owned by an author, at least as default. When you
start a new "knol" you can also allow everyone to edit if logged in.
That author can write about what he wishes to write, even when there
is already an article about that topic. Other people can give a rating
(stars) and give comments. Authors received a part of the earnings of
the advertisements displayed on there articles if the switch the
advertisements on. The default license is "Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0". It is currently not clear of the GFDL-licence that
Wikipedia is using is compatible. But you can also pick a licence that
does not allow commercial use or you can disallow all use elsewhere.
So knol be very open or very restrictive depending on what you chose
as author of a knol.
http://knol.google.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PYO-fN_VgU -- Jimmy Wales gives his
idea about Knol & Wikipedia

[China] - The Chinese language Wikipedia is now, months after the
unblocking of the other languages editions, also unblocked. At least
in some parts of China. It is expected the will be blocked again as
soon as the Olympic fire is extinguished.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikipedia_unblocked_by_government

=== Quote ===

Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its
numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed
crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new
world in their own image as promised by the sacred words, and spoke of
the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but
a follower.

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Mozilla

//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 710
Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Platonides, bawolff
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////

Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy
news (and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe;
mailto:request@...?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Notification of delay of EN Wikizine

2008-07-15T07:47:16Z

Dear reader of Wikizine in English,

The next edition of Wikizine is delayed. At this time it is still the
intention to provide you with this edition.

If you would like to help out with the creation of EN Wikizine please
contact me at <walter@...>

Greetings,

Walter
--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community

_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe;
mailto:request@...?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 25 Number: 96

2008-06-16T16:31:37Z

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 22 Tech flash

2008-05-27T14:48:52Z

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 21 Number: 95

2008-05-21T15:17:40Z